Monday, June 25, 2012

Bad Habits Die Hard

Writing is no easy task. The amount of work that goes into a poem, short story, novel, or screenplay takes a lot of time and dedication. So those sneaky little bad habits getting in our way makes our job harder. Nothing is worse then knowing your habits and having the hardest time in breaking them.

What's mine?

Telling vs. Showing AND punctuation.

These are HUGE considering they are the most noticeable when it comes to readers. I'm sure my critique partners are beyond annoyed by page fifty after all the paragraphs they highlight. We've started to do a chapter at a time. They show me my biggest mistakes and I comb through the pages and try and improve in chapter two. The only way to get better is to practice.

What are your bad habits? No time like the presence to tell us your dirty little secrets! How are you improving them?

I am the queen of saying things twice. I get so carried away by my prose and the emotion in the story that I can't just say it one way--I have to say it another way, and maybe yet another way, before I let it go. This is ... not good. I'm getting better at editing myself and condensing and deleting the extra stuff, but it's still an issue for me.

The more I write, the cleaner my writing gets. So I must be learning something along the way!! LOL!!! I'm to the point now where as I type out my first draft, sometimes almost instantly when I type a word I know is a no-no, I delete immediately. Other times, no so much. If I am really into the story and it is flowing freely, I get lost in my story and don't notice the mistakes so easily.

My bad habit is describing outfits. every time there is a chance the characters would be wearing a change of clothes, I will describe the outfits. Worse with female characters because they get more choice in what they wear. Male characters just end up in t-shirts, shirt and jeans and combats. Unless they have a thing for mad print t-shirts.

I think I've done all these things at one time or another. Lately, my biggest oops has been skipping words all together! It's like I get so carried away in the moment and my brain moves faster than my fingers so my fingers skip entire words and I don't realize it until I look at it later on. Weird, huh?

Telling vs. showing is one of mine too, and I am constantly fixing it when I revise. Punctuation is a tough one. If you don't learn that in school (and grammar isn't taught like it used to be so younger writers can be at a disadvantage there) then it helps to get a couple good grammar books and study punctuation.